A Concrete Approach to Increasing Resilience and Reducing Risk

How can vulnerable populations protect themselves against risk when they continue to build upon a poor foundation?

Do crumbling buildings have any place in sustainable development?

These questions are at the heart of Cement Trust’s development strategy. We work with the international concrete community to develop and implement tools that charities can use to build better. Though well intended, Charities often come to a disaster area and quickly rebuild a community. What they don’t know is that the local materials and methods that they use will all but guarantee that any new structures will fail again, in the next disaster. Cement Trust wants to provide tools to Charities to help them overcome the low quality of materials and low skills of local labor (the poor concrete supply chain). Cement Trust believes it is better to reduce the risk of future disasters than to depend on the resilience of the people to overcome such disasters.

Community Resilience?

Resilience is defined as the capacity of individuals, households, or communities to decrease the impact of any event which negatively affects them. Crumbling concrete kills and maims thousands of people during natural disasters as we saw in Haiti in 2010. Many communities, with the help of charitable organizations, have shown the resilience to rebuild and return to a measure of normalcy.

Cement Trust helps to limit the impact of these negative events by providing the tools to strengthen the quality of the concrete supply chain within each community.

Building a trustworthy concrete supply system reduces the time and resources needed to rescue and rebuild following a crisis. It ensures that the rebuilt structures will better survive the next earthquake or hurricane.

Worldwide Risk

When inferior construction allows structures to crumble, that requires rebuilding and the attendant costs to the environment of more cement manufacture and more mining aggregate. Communities built with quality materials are more resilient, sustainable and better prepared for future negative events.

Partners in Trust

Cement Trust works as a liaison between the concrete industry and the international development community to raise the quality of concrete construction in areas of high risk.

Partnering to develop local concrete supply infrastructure lowers the risk that negative events have on the community. A growing and dynamic concrete supply chain provide economic support and structural resilience in a way that is unmatched in community development programs.

A Supply Chain Approach

Charities are experts at rescuing and caring for the needs of those in crisis. Concrete experts are good at creating strong tools and sustainable structures. Cement Trust brings these two groups together in a supply chain approach that supports both of their worthy mandates. Charities can use a growing supply system to build both buildings and livelihoods. Concrete experts can develop opportunities to expand into new and growing markets. Locals receive the benefits of economic growth, skilled jobs, and trustworthy buildings.

Vulnerable populations can be protected against risk when charities and industry work together to create trustworthy supply chains.